Plunging tax revenues and soaring legacy costs for retired workers have pushed hundreds of communities and municipalities across Michigan to the brink. Now more than ever, elected officials need new tools and maximum flexibility to provide the services their constituents expect without bankrupting the treasuries they oversee.
Yet this November an array of special interests — including two whose causes this newspaper has long championed — will ask voters to endorse ballot proposals that would restrict the authority of virtually every elected officeholder in the state, dramatically complicating the task of governing Michigan’s counties, cities and school districts.

Even more alarmingly, most of these proposals would lock their restrictions into constitutional concrete that would make it almost impossible for policymakers to adjust to changing circumstances and political sentiments.

Three of the five proposed constitutional amendments — Proposal 4, which would mandate union membership for home health care workers; Proposal 5, which would make it virtually impossible to raise or reform taxes; and Proposal 6, which is designed to preserve one family’s monopoly — are easy to dismiss.

We are more sympathetic to the impulses behind two others — Proposal 2, which would provide additional protection for collective bargaining rights, and Proposal 3, which would establish more ambitious renewable energy targets. But they, too, place unreasonable constraints on democratically elected officeholders.

Unlike the other five proposals, any of whose passage would alter the Michigan Constitution, Proposal 1 is a referendum on a law enacted by the Legislature. If adopted, it would simply affirm the state’s authority to take control of dangerously insolvent municipalities and school districts. The law at issue is harsh but necessary medicine for Michigan’s troubled localities and deserves voters’ support.

Proposal 1: Vote 'YES'

Public Act 4 isn’t likable. But it is necessary.

Local elected officials and public employee unions have long bristled about state intervention (the original emergency financial manager law was enacted in 1990) in their affairs. Some have attacked the law as undemocratic, sometimes in court.

The bristling turned into outright rebellion when the law was beefed up in 2011 to allow emergency managers to undo labor contracts. (The petition drive to force an election on PA4 was largely paid for by the public sector labor union AFSCME.)

But this change was deliberately calculated to allow municipalities and school districts to make significant budget adjustments without filing for bankruptcy, which could have disastrous consequences for taxpayers far beyond the bankrupt community or school district.

If PA4 is repealed, the status of the old law (PA72) will be unclear, and likely contested in court.

Regardless, PA72 isn’t sufficient. Without the ability to alter contracts, making significant reductions in labor expenses and legacy costs like retiree health care is all but impossible for an emergency manager, much less an elected official. A lack of clarity over the legal role of an emergency manager led to costly legal fights and convoluted, ineffective turnaround plans. PA4 also allows state assistance to be extended earlier in a financial crisis and, in theory, will result in the appointment of fewer emergency managers.

Cities that qualify for PA4 intervention have hit the wall. Residents are departing, services are abysmal. Long-term debts outweigh revenue, complicated by a declining tax and population base, and there’s no bright horizon reachable by local elected officials.

Hence, Public Act 4. Is it undemocratic? Sure. But the alternatives are much, much worse.

Proposal 2: Vote 'NO'

As rich as Michigan’s collective bargaining history is, and as much as the Free Press supports unions and unionization, there is just no good reason to inculcate this policy issue into the state Constitution.
Proposal 2 would handcuff local and state governments in their dealings with public employees. Even criminal background checks for teachers or drug testing for cops and firefighters would be subject to bargaining.
Michigan just can’t afford those kinds of limitations in an era when debt from pension and health obligations to current and retired employees are pushing many local governments to the brink of insolvency.
The marathon litigation and administrative chaos that would be unleashed by Proposal 2 — as local and state governments scrambled to get basic safeguards back in place — would be a massive, expensive distraction. Proposal 2 would also make a constitutional right out of a policy prerogative, further muddying up a constitution that already addresses too many inappropriate issues.
Proponents say Proposal 2 is needed to protect workers’ bargaining rights. But those rights are already guaranteed by both federal and state law.
Proposal 2 would hand a permanent advantage to the unions in the bargaining process, something that ought to be subject to discussion and negotiation through the legislative process.

Proposal 3: Vote 'NO'

Almost everything about this plan is admirable except the idea of locking it into the state Constitution.

The goal is reasonable, and there’s even a cost-control cap. It would probably work just fine, building on the 10% renewable standard the Legislature has enacted for the year 2015.

Proposal 3 also sends the important message that it’s time for Michigan utilities to move away from the increasing expense of hauling coal from afar when cleaner options have become readily available — and most of those options could simultaneously boost the state’s economy while fewer customers’ dollars leave Michigan to pay for coal and the cost of getting it here. Even a dividend-centric utility ought to appreciate the potential for more economic activity within its selling territory — not to mention the improvements to air quality and mercury emissions as less coal is burned.

Other states that have taken the plunge into renewable energy have had great success to date, both in progressing toward their goals and in holding electric rates down.

None, however, have put their goals in their constitutions.

The constitutional route makes it far more difficult to adjust the goal or change the definition of renewable energy, should events warrant. Even within the environmental community, disputes sometime occur about various sources of renewables: threats to birds from wind turbines and disruptions to fish when dams are placed, for example.

Michigan has the capacity through wind alone to meet this standard, and a statutory voter initiative to enact 25% renewables by 2025 — or maybe even 30% by 2030 — would be welcome in the future. But for now, the better choice is to vote NO on inserting Proposal 3 into the Michigan Constitution.

Proposal 4: Vote 'NO'

Proponents of Proposal 4 contend this proposed constitutional amendment is about making it easier for people with disabilities to find trained home care workers. If it stopped there, they might have had a better argument for passage.

Instead, Prop 4 reaches into the realm of policy by declaring that some 40,000 home care workers — many of whom are family members paid with state and federal Medicaid dollars — can unionize.

This amendment revives the infrastructure established during the Granholm administration and which the Legislature defunded earlier this year.

Proponents say unionization by the Service Employees International Union has led to better, more consistent care because it has helped to raise wages. It also has implemented union dues and agency fees for workers.

Proposal 4 is a policy question that should be handled statutorily and should not be added to the state’s Constitution.

Establishing standards for the care of disabled people is a legitimate civil rights issue. This amendment might have been supportable if it had stuck to the idea of creating standards for home care workers. But because it attempts to lock collective bargaining rights for those workers into the Constitution, it is wholly unsupportable.

Proposal 5: Vote 'NO'

Acceding to tax limitations like Proposal 5’s is the equivalent of saying the current tax system is perfect. No matter what changes occur in the economy, Michigan will stick with the taxes it has now.
That’s because most tax changes involve lowering some rates and raising others. While the tax shifts Gov. Rick Snyder made last year to end the Michigan Business Tax weren’t perfect, they likely would not have even been discussed if this constitutional amendment had been in place. The new corporate income tax that replaced the MBT and the broadened base on pensions would have required a two-thirds legislative vote or a vote of the people, both of which rank in the category of near impossibilities.
Tax changes usually create losers as well as winners, and voters elect lawmakers specifically to make difficult trade-offs. It’s hard enough to get a simple majority, let alone a two-thirds vote.
The other option — asking for voter approval in a November election — could thwart the Legislature in an economic emergency. And every potential revenue stream would be affected, from so-called sin taxes on items like tobacco and liquor to use taxes, such as those Michiganders pay at the gas pump to keep roads in repair.
Lawmakers might also become gun-shy about reducing taxes in good times lest they never have the votes to raise them again.

The result? A tax system frozen in time. To the extent tax changes reflect societal changes (global competition for manufacturing, e-commerce, new technology), setting up barriers to different forms of taxation is like voting to stay in a previous century.

Boosters of this measure say the two-thirds rule would encourage bipartisanship, but it’s more likely to promote paralysis. Thirteen of the 38 members of the Michigan

Senate could halt a tax compromise. The U.S. Senate, where 41 of the 100 members can stop almost anything, is a model for how supermajority rule often feels more like hostage-taking by a minority.

Proposal 6: Vote 'NO'

Last June, after years of negotiations, Michigan and Canada struck an agreement to build the New International Trade Crossing, a publicly owned bridge between Detroit and Windsor. Proposal 6 is Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel (Matty) Moroun’s last-gasp gambit to block construction of the new bridge, which would likely draw significant traffic and toll revenue away from the Ambassador.

The Moroun family seeks to preserve its monopoly by delaying construction until a future vote, and possibly win a future campaign to block it entirely. But its campaign to “let the people decide” is a charade that has set a new standard for dishonesty and demagoguery in pursuit of the Morouns’ financial self-interest.

The public policy case for a new bridge is airtight; witness the support it has drawn from respected figures across the political spectrum, including all five living Michigan governors, the Michigan Chamber, organized labor, and local elected leaders from both parties, and the possibility Proposal 6 could derail its construction is the only reason anyone needs to oppose its passage.

But nonpartisan analysts agree Proposal 6 could damage Michigan’s economic recovery even more seriously by requiring expensive public initiatives to authorize even more modest infrastructure repairs.